The invention relates to a dental vacuum system and, more particularly, to an in-treatment room dental vacuum system that provides for efficient operation with low power requirements, low maintenance and easily manageable, safe discharge.
Many dental procedures require removing unwanted materials from the operating field. Removal actions are needed to improve visibility and to protect the patient from aspirating or swallowing dental materials or biological residue. Dental vacuum systems were created to meet this need.
Initially the “dental vacuum system” consisted of a simple aspirating bulb. Later, water venturi systems were used. By the mid-1900s, electrically powered, devices similar to vacuum cleaners began to appear in many U.S. dental treatment rooms. These devices were noisy, produced poor flow and were subject to short service lives.
Central dental vacuum systems, in which vacuum source equipment is located outside of the treatment room, became common starting in the early 1960s. In central dental vacuum systems, the equipment is out-of-sight, sometimes out of hearing range, and often out-of-mind.
Water ring pumps became the favored vacuum producing technology for smaller systems as they produced strong vacuum, were compact and relatively inexpensive to purchase. However, as water quality and availability, as well as increasing water and sewer costs began to complicate the ownership of water ring pumps, water-free systems gained in popularity. In the 1990s, the RAMVAC Dental Vacuum System successfully challenged existing concepts of dental vacuum system costs, durability and performance and soon sold more dollars worth of water-free dental vacuum systems in the U.S. than all other water-free systems combined.
Dental vacuum systems are associated with two categories of well documented safety concerns. The first category involves the environmental impact of system discharges known to contain significant amounts of mercury. The second category involves the safety of dental treatment room personnel exposed to fugitive aerosols and gases produced during dental procedures. These fugitive materials could be, but are often not, captured by the dental vacuum system.
In addition to safety concerns associated with dental vacuum in general, there are numerous and serious, generally unrealized drawbacks to central systems.